David E. Petzal - The Gun Nut

“Within modern traditional societies, the ability to survive is drastically reduced if the group is too small. A lone individual rarely survives for more than a year….”—Modern People in Africa and Europe, by Goran Burenult

In April, 1992, an electrician named Jim Gallien gave a 24-year-old hitchhiker named Chris McCandless a ride to the Stampede Trail above the Clearwater Fork of the Toklat River. McCandless, who gave his name only as “Alex,” said it was his intention to hike up the trail into the wilderness and live off the land. His equipment consisted of 10 pounds of rice, a .22 rifle and ammo, a guide to the edible plants of the area, several books, and no map or compass.. Gallien was appalled at what the kid was about to do, and offered to buy him some of the things he would need to stay alive. But “Alex” would not listen. Gallien was the last person to see him alive. When his body was found by hunters in September, Chris McCandless—or what was left of him—weighed 67 pounds.

McCandless’ death made national headlines. He had come from a well-to-do Virginia family, graduated from Emory University in 1990, and then simply vanished. He abandoned his car, gave away his money, and calling himself as “Alexander Supertramp,” hoboed around the American West for nearly 2 years before heading for Alaska and his end.

These are the bare bones of one of the best books I’ve read in years. It’s called Into the Wild, and was written in 1996 by Jon Krakauer. It sold something like 2 million copies and has been made into a motion picture.

A good deal of the book’s appeal (for people like you and me) is that we can see parts of ourselves in McCandless. He actually did what just about all of us have dreamed of doing at some point or another. But at some point or another we developed common sense, but poor McCandless, who was very, very bright, did not.

His cause of death was given as starvation, but he may have poisoned himself through carelessness, and if he had owned a decent map, he would very likely have been able to save himself before he grew too weak to walk.

Into the Wild follows McCandless from his childhood to his death, and the odds are you will not be able to put it down. It’s marred only by two chapters telling of Krakauer’s own near-death experiences climbing mountains in Alaska. They are there, I guess, to show that he understands Spiritual Angst and has Messed with Death. You can skip them and you will be none the worse for it. The other missing element is the photos that McCandless took of himself as he starved. The last one, taken just before he crawled into his sleeping bag to die, is something out of a nightmare. You can find it on YouTube, or maybe we can conjure it up here.

And as you read, you will wish you could have given McCandless a hard smack upside the head and said, “Kid, this is serious; this is no game.“ But he didn’t listen in life, and he would not listen to you or me now.

A couple of days ago, I visited an old friend in Vermont. In 1973, I had given him the mounted head of an elk I had killed the year before in Montana. It was a 6x6, and I think I was prouder of that animal than anything else I had ever taken. I lost 30 pounds in order to be able to climb the mountain where he lived and I shot him on a day when the snow was up over your knees and it was 15 below that morning.

But I had not been to visit my friend in something like 25 years, and my memory of the elk head was not accurate. I recalled it as being a massive beast with a humongous spread of antlers. It is not; it is indeed a 6x6, but it’s a small bull. If you saw him in a herd you wouldn’t look twice at him. But he was the first elk I ever took, and to me he was the greatest wapiti ever collected.

Your memories—particularly the fond ones—rarely match up with reality. If you have a choice, stick with memories.

In case any of you were wondering where the hell I was for most of July, I was in Africa, and have come back at great risk and personal expense to make you aware of the virtues of the following:

Hardigg Storm Case Model IM 3300: This is a two-rifle case made of high-performance resin. It’s light for how strong it is, comes with two handles and wheels, six latches (which open by depressing spring-loaded tabs so you don’t rip your fingernails out) and hasps for four locks. Two of us had Storm Cases and wore big smiles. Two other hunters shared a lesser aluminum case and ended up with a busted stock and a wrecked scope. They did not smile. As the airlines descend into total chaos and anarchy, you would do well to visit Hardigg’s website, which is stormcase.com

Barnes TSX and MRX bullets: I used a .338 loaded with 225-grain TSXs at 2,750 fps; one of my friends used a .30/06 loaded with 180-grain MRXs at 2,700 fps. Between us we shot something like a dozen animals from 50 pounds up to 450 at ranges from 25 yards to 320. Nothing required a second shot. Not a single bullet was recovered; everything went clear through. How do you do better than that? Barnesbullets.com

Zeiss Victory 8x32 T* FL binoculars: These were loaners. The weigh 20 ounces, are 4.6 inches tall with eyecups extended, and were best summed up by a PH who took a look through them: “They make you want to take your own binoculars and throw them as far as you can.” Are they expensive? Of course, but on the other hand, what the hell are you saving it for? The end is near. Zeiss.com

Mystery Ranch Crew Cab Pack: This is an expandable daypack that employs a frame. There are three cells (plus two more in the cover) that expand from 1900 ccs to 5,000. You can pack it in all sorts of configurations, and it has the best suspension system I’ve ever used. Moreover, all those cells and straps and buckles appear to keep the TSA from asking you over to the little table to see what you’re carrying. Even loaded to near-max capacity, it fits in the overhead compartment of a jet. Mysteryranch.com

Can we have a Gun Nut “U.S.A! U.S.A!” please?

Alaskan Corey Cogdell, 21, and competing in her first Olympics, won a four-way shootout to capture a bronze medal in trap in Beijing. Then she told interviewers that moose hunting with her dad helped her win the medal. How great is that?

I met Cogdell briefly at SHOT Show in Las Vegas this year. Like every member of USA shooting I’ve met, she is clean-cut, well-spoken and a fine ambassador for both the United States and the shooting sports. So, congratulations, Corey.

Incidentally, the gold went to Finnish shooter Satu Makela-Nummela. No word on whether she hunts, but Finland, like Alaska, is rich in moose.Coincidence or not? You decide.

It occurred to me that as a responsible journalist I could not simply say that I had a vomit-colored rifle built and let it go at that. The rifle in question was a 7mm Weatherby Magnum, made by Ultra Light Arms in 1989. It was intended as a beanfield rifle, and therefore, since it was a gun made for use in the Deep South, I thought it should have an appropriate camo pattern.

However, I was sick of looking at trees and flowers and chirping birds, and wanted something original. So I hit on the idea of the puke pattern you see after a pig pull and asked the stock painter at ULA to make the background beer-yellow, and include green splotches that looked like okra* and dark brown gobs that looked like pulled pork. It was an artistic triumph.

The rifle, which had a No. 3 contour Douglas barrel, was one of the best all-around guns I’ve ever owned, and it went to such diverse places as Texas, Wyoming, Quebec, and South Carolina. I finally settled on a 160-grain Nosler Partition as my everything bullet. Velocity, as I recall was about 3,100 fps, which is plenty. On a hunt in Quebec, the stock was covered in caribou blood after I packed out the meat from one of the awful beasts, and it improved the gun’s appearance considerably.

Because the nature of my trade prevents me from keeping rifles forever, I sold it some years back and it has since been repainted in a drab and respectable color. But it was fun while it lasted.

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One of you mentioned a piece I did years ago for Gun Digest titled “I Sold All My Lovely Wood,” which told the true and pitiful tale of how I said goodbye to just about all my wood-stocked rifles. There’s a subsequent story to that.

A few years after the article ran, I was seated at a table at the Swarovski cocktail party at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, stuffing down free food** as fast as I could. Across the table from me was a young man from Sweden who kept staring at my name tag, and then at my face, and then my tag again. And I mean he stared.

I tried to place his name, and whether I had insulted him at some point, and was looking for something to use as a weapon when he came across the table. Then he remembered:

“YOU…YOU…YOU…”, he said, pointing his finger like Bubba Clinton at a press conference. I braced to throw the first punch and then run. “YOU SOLD YOUR WOOD!”

I admitted that I had, and after stuffing my pockets with canapés, left in a hurry.

*In my yankee opinion, the best use of okra is as an ingredient for puke.

**Were it not for free food, most gun writers would collapse from starvation before the SHOT Show ended.